Passwords: The Bane of Humanity
post by Michelle Griep
Usually I love to write. It's my happy place. All unicorns and rainbows and flying puppies and such. Until someone asks me to write a password. Then the unicorn is beheaded. The rainbows drain into raw sewage. And all the puppies are tossed into a sack and drowned.
Yep. That drastic. Want to know how I really feel about stupid passwords?
I thought I'd solved my dilemma by just using the same dang word for everything. Uhh, don't try that at home, kids. Bad idea. All it took was one little hacker sitting in a shack in Siberia to bust that code. So now I've got a bazillion different passwords, but how do I know if they're any good? How do you know if yours are any good? Never fear . . . of course I've researched out a handy dandy list for you and for me.
How To Concoct An Awesome Password
Believe it or not, long or complex passwords don't offer better protection. Why? Because passwords are usually captured through phishing or malware, and with those attacks it doesn't matter how long or complex your password is. The best piece of advice I saw was stick to 12-14 characters.
Use a mix of upper and lower letters, and numbers and symbols. But don't be obvious, like substituting a zero for the letter O. Yeah. I found that out the hard way.
Real words, or dictionary words, are frowned upon. Instead, go random. Here's how . . .
Come up with a sentence that you can remember, like My first house was at 4233 Ottawa and I paid $72,000. That would translate into:
Yep. That drastic. Want to know how I really feel about stupid passwords?
I thought I'd solved my dilemma by just using the same dang word for everything. Uhh, don't try that at home, kids. Bad idea. All it took was one little hacker sitting in a shack in Siberia to bust that code. So now I've got a bazillion different passwords, but how do I know if they're any good? How do you know if yours are any good? Never fear . . . of course I've researched out a handy dandy list for you and for me.
How To Concoct An Awesome Password
Believe it or not, long or complex passwords don't offer better protection. Why? Because passwords are usually captured through phishing or malware, and with those attacks it doesn't matter how long or complex your password is. The best piece of advice I saw was stick to 12-14 characters.
Use a mix of upper and lower letters, and numbers and symbols. But don't be obvious, like substituting a zero for the letter O. Yeah. I found that out the hard way.
Real words, or dictionary words, are frowned upon. Instead, go random. Here's how . . .
Come up with a sentence that you can remember, like My first house was at 4233 Ottawa and I paid $72,000. That would translate into:
Mfhwa4233OaIp$72k.
But if that still seems like too much work for you, then hop on over to
Diceware Passphrase and just "roll the dice" to figure out some newbies.
Once you've devised your fantastic plethora of passwords, you can store them at sites like
Last Pass, or just go old school like me. I've got them written down on a piece of paper. Yeah. Take that, Russian hackers.
Dang. They just might.